Gianni Berengo Gardin. "True photography". Reportages, images, encounters

"True photography" sets out to review the long career of Gianni Berengo Gardin (b. Santa Margherita Ligure 1930), the photographer who has managed to capture the spirit of our era and our country possibly better than any other over the past fifty years.  His life and work are a clear-cut and definite choice of sides:  as a photographer he is unfalteringly devoted to recording reality in the round, leaving no stone unturned.
 
The exhibition will be hosting his main reportages:  alongside celebrated shots, visitors will also be seeing some of his less well-known work and several pictures never put on public display before now, offering new keys for interpreting his take on reality and thus on the role played by the conscious vision of reality that only "true photography" can offer.
 
Being a photographer in Berengo Gardin's view means playing an observer's role and adopting a sympathetic, participatory approach to reality, a characteristic that he shares with all of the great documentary reporters-cum-photographers of the 20^th century.  And indeed in recent years Berengo Gardin has invariably been in the front line in an effort, as American sociologist and photographer Lewis Hine would have put it, to tell us what needed changing and what needed celebrating.  With his camera he has focused primarily on Italy, on the world of work, on its characteristics and its changes, which he records the way a seismographer might record an earthquake; or on the condition of women in both the north and south of the country, capturing their sacrifices, their expectations and their emancipation; or on the world apart peopled by the gypsies, to whom Berengo Gardin has devoted much time, much love and countless books. "When I take photographs", Berengo Gardin says, "I like moving, moving about.  I don't say I like dancing the way Cartier-Bresson used to, but at the same time I try to be as invisible as possible.  When I have to tell a story, I always aim to start from the outside, to show where a village is and what it looks like, to go into its streets, then its shops and its houses to photograph objects.  That's the thread; it's a logical, normal method that's useful for discovering not just a village but also a city or a country.  It's good for discovering and for getting to know mankind".
Reflecting the temporal sequence of the reportages realized over the course of Berengo Gardin long career, the exhibition will be divided into six large sections interlinked in a single journey of exploration: Venice; Milan and the Work; Psychiatric Hospitals, Gypsies and Protest Photos; Italy and Portraits; Women; Visions of the World: Landscapes and Big Ships.
 
Biography
Gianni Berengo Gardin was born in Santa Margherita Ligure in 1930.  After moving to Milano he devoted his time primarily to documentary photography, probing society and capturing the environment.  In 1979 he began to work with Renzo Piano, documenting the stages in the realisation of the great architect's projects.  He won the Leica Oskar Barnack Award in 1995.  He is very much involved in publishing books (over 250) and in organising exhibitions (over 200 one-man showsi).  Contrasto recently published The Book of Books (2014), a collection of all the volumes that this master of photography has produced (over 250), Madhouses (2015) and Venice and Large Cruise Ships (2015).  Gianni Beregno Gardin's entire output and archive are managed by the Fondazione Forma for Fotografia di Milano.

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